You must have used really crappy drivers. I ran Compiz in Ubuntu off of a live cd on an old P3 with a 9500 Pro and it was smooth as butter, much better than Aero runs on my much faster P4 3.4, X850 XT. Vista is laggy in comparison and I've tried a couple different drivers.

Maybe fast to you is slow to me but I'm telling you, Compiz was really fast the time I played around with it.

By "Slow" I meant when I would minimize windows it would drop frames and lag, and unminimizing windows like firefox it would lag and flicker black. I always used the newest nvidia drivers. Certain animations were always perfectly smooth but these were the really fancy more intensive effects like flames n **** which I never use. I have used Aero on an integrated x200 fine, and also no lag on an old ass 9600PRO. so I guess we both have an odd problem maybe related to drivers. There is no way Aero should be slow on your card and compiz slow on mine.

Aero is great. I just wish Microsoft offers more themes. I don't really like Stardock apps and etc...

I doubt that will happen with Windows 7. Microsoft hasn't ever really been one to include a bunch of themes. Look at the 9x series they all used the same taskbar, but you could change the color. XP you only had 3 color choices. Vista is like the 9x series and you have the same taskbar, but you can choose from any color.Really if you want more themes your going to need a 3rd party program or find a patch to install your own themes.

Faster. You know, as in more responsive, less stuttering and quicker to render. You might want to try the alternatives.

I own two Macs. My laptop is a Macbook (black C2D model) with Leopard on it.

I was simply curious how you measure the performance of the DWM versus QE / XGL. On the same system at the same resolution, I have always found them to be comparable. The DWM does have some extra burden versus Quartz Extreme, since QE doesn't do anything in 3D - and doesn't have to contend with all the legacy support that the DWM does. Further, Apple has much tighter control over the driver situation.

Still, unless you're trying to drive a very high resolution display on a low memory (or terribly slow) video card, composition with the DWM should always be silky smooth. One case where it wasn't was on my old work machine, which was an X300 and and X200 on-board chip driving three monitors. The cards simply weren't up to the task at that resolution, and transitions would sometimes be a little choppy. But the 8600 in my new box drives two 24" beautifully. And as I said, my Macbook runs both the DWM and QE just as smoothly (unless I connect a large external display, at which point they both drop frames now and then).

You must have used really crappy drivers. I ran Compiz in Ubuntu off of a live cd on an old P3 with a 9500 Pro and it was smooth as butter, much better than Aero runs on my much faster P4 3.4, X850 XT. Vista is laggy in comparison and I've tried a couple different drivers.

Maybe fast to you is slow to me but I'm telling you, Compiz was really fast the time I played around with it.

Something must be horribly wrong with your configuration. There is no way Aero would perform anything but perfectly on an X850 XT.

Over the weekend I finally managed to play with the build.... but disappointed.

One my primary machine, it asked for my SATA driver (never happened when installing Vista, as my drives were set as IDE in BIOS). After adding the driver from my USB thumb drive it would finally install. It didn't boot after first restart, however.

On my laptop it installed perfectly, but with no driver support for the video card. After numerous tries I gave up in the end, so Aero is now left in the dark.

Oh well, so there's nothing to show.

The build is 6.1.6519.

The GUI, as much of you have guessed, is very much like Vista. I don't know if once the right video card driver is in place whether there will be flashy stuffs to surprise me. The system is very responsive, using barely 480MB of memory after boot.

Gadgets are now integrated into explorer. You can right click on desktop and select "Add Gadget" or "Hide Gadget". There is a new gadget called "Windows Media Center" that displays now playing information from the WMC. On the same menu, "Display" is added above "Personalization" which gives you direct access to display DPI settings. The page is much more polished than the one in Vista.

The start menu features a pin besides each item. Clicking on it toggles pinning/unpinning the item. Search in explorer is now states where you search within (usually being within the folder, as in Vista). You can now, however, adjust the size of the search box.

XAML fonts, called the "Composite Fonts" are now added to the font folder. Perhaps WPF will be much more prominent in this release. It's disappointing that I don't have Aero running, or otherwise there might be some interesting stuffs to see.

A new application is added, dubbed the "XPS Viewer", no surprises, either.

Then finally, something interesting came up: the feedback tool. The feedback tool lists the "pillars" of Win 7. You can see that Microsoft is aiming to fine tune this release as the case in XP rather than technological advancement as in 2K. highlights include"network aware", with improved connection tools and detections. It will have the ability to detect which network you're in and switch your settings and devices accordingly; With Live account, you can carry your IE settings and favorites with you; Gadget data caching; New Calculator, Paint, and Wordpad using WPF; install to desktop in 10 mins with only 1 reboot; instant streaming; better battery mileage, etc. All descriptions are scenario-based, so what will actually turn up is still yet to know.

Oh.. how could I miss this. A new boot screen does show up, finally. A full screen Vista-logon screen like boot screen with a beam scrolling across the whole screen near the bottom. Looks nice but reminds me of Win9x (well since XP we've been in the "dark", so surprised to see such a bright boot screen)!

Rock on cache! I managed to save his post.

PS: Please note that this is all speculation. Microsoft haven't confirmed anything or announced what will be in Windows 7 so don't get your hopes up!